The decision to marry is a major life step. We do so with certain expectations – that our partner will love and care for us, will share the duties of managing a household based upon which partner is willing to do what tasks, and will support us in our lives with challenges such as a difficult job or family problems. When that partner completely steps away from any of these things, our ability to understand them may be challenged as their behavior is suddenly out of keeping with what we expected at the outset. This is an example of .